If you needed a reminder of just how rampant cheating can get, then how about Garena's mobile hit Free Fire, whose anti-cheat team had a seriously busy 2020.
Now, we are talking about a mobile game, where most metrics tend to be slightly higher than their console and PC gaming counterparts. Nevertheless, 30 million is still one serious figure.
The issue clearly carries a lot of weight for the developer as well, as Garena posted a video called 2020 Anti Hack Annual Review, where they summarised the team's annual anti-cheat efforts.
Free Fire's playerbase naturally took part in a lot of reporting, and they accounted for about a third of these reports.
Garena posted a list of most used cheats too, and perhaps expectedly, auto-aim accounts for 36 per cent of total cheat programs used in Free Fire. Wallhacks, i.e. exploits that let you see through walls, came in second with 23 per cent.
Interestingly enough, Free Fire's developer punished more than 450,000 accounts for intentionally playing with hackers. While this may seem a bit too harsh, we're probably looking at accounts that intentionally abused the cheaters' superpowers for their own benefit.
"Using hacks or playing with hackers will not only worsen the gaming environment, but also get your account banned easily. Fighting against hackers with consistent efforts and perseverance is a lifelong mission for us", the dev wrote.
Garena promised to keep up their anti-cheat efforts in 2021 as well, so it'll be interesting to see whether the numbers improve. Or is it worsen? Either way, Free Fire has been one of the most downloaded games of 2020, so hopefully, the team pull it off again.
